music for thursday

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sorry for the overly religious content if you understand and can’t handel it.. without understanding (though i know what it’s about..) you can really enjoy the harmony , interactions between the vocal and viola da gamba mixed in with harpsichord, then finally the gorgeous interweaving of baroque violin and the other 2 instruments in the entire last minute (would have been great to hear the oboe here too!). waaaay back in college just after discovering classical music, i stepped into a record store and heard a recording of Kathleen Battle singing this and fell in love with it instantly (without ever checking the meaning). In this particular take, you can interpret the voice as simply part of the 4 instruments, and likely the content is reflected in the “swing”. We can jot this down as the mildly expressive way, the “typically” way to sing Bach? As opposed to something with a bit more expression, e.g., Sandrine Piau’s version here, to super fast tempo? Am still working that into head, especially after a recent discussion on secular vs “typical” approach..

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7 Responses to music for thursday

Grin, these girls are really funny (and talented), some sort of baroque spice girls?
Good selection, the Piau version is very nice as well, I enjoyed both approaches, the first more playful, Piau more expressive, though I don’t find it deviating fundamentally from what I would expect as a typical way to perform Bach today.

Haha, that’s a lot of celli! Not exactly historical performance practice, but I guess this is not the aim here, seems something like a fun event? 🙂 Actually it is kind of fun, if you don’t take it too seriously.

and on non-German singing Bach, from Piau’s very interesting interview:When I did the audition for Herreweghe my dream was to sing Bach with him. The tradition of singing Bach in France is not so strong. That’s what I wanted. But he told me, “Your voice is too romantic.”

NIce interview! And a pity she couldn’t sing Bach earlier with Herreweghe. I think he is a wonderful conductor and his ensemble is manificent, but it is probably more on the ‘puristic’ side of interpretation, where, i.e. voices should have very little vibrato with the focus of merging together, nothing should stand out. So I can see, why Piau’s voice was maybe already too much in that regard for him.

Harpsichordist Elina Albach:Based in Berlin, harpsichordist Elina Albach works together with artists who overcome the boundaries of the established music scene and who aspire to enrich concert life through excellent quality, rather than quantity. Her new ensemble CONTINUUM’s musical language moves in a sphere between old and new, between the 17th and 21st centuries, between knowledge and innovation, between vocal and instrumental music.

Violinist Elfa Rún Kristinsdóttir:Icelandic violinist Elfa Rún Kristinsdóttir (1985–) first came to international prominence in 2006, when she took the Grand Prize, Audience Prize and prize for the youngest finalist in that year’s International Bach Competition in Leipzig. She’s currently in Salzburg performing with the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin and Renée Jacobs.

Soprano Marie Luise Werneburg:The German soprano, Marie Luise Werneburg, aims to sing with a natural, unpretentious delivery, speaking directly to the emotions of the listener. Whilst enjoying a wide repertoire from the Renaissance to Arnold Schoenberg, she has a particular affinity to German Baroque Music, especially the works of J.S. Bach and Heinrich Schütz but also those of lesser-known composers of the period, like Johann Rosenmüller and Heinrich Ignaz von Biber.